Supported Virtual Machine OVA Templates

What is an OVA? A virtual machine template defines the configuration of the virtual machine's virtual hardware. Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for describing a virtual machine template, and Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) is an open standard to package and distribute these templates. Files in OVA format have an extension of ".ova".

Do Cisco UC VMs require these OVAs? To be TAC-supported, Virtual Machines for Cisco Unified Communications applications must use one of the provided OVA templates on this page.

They represent what the UC apps have been tested with

It is the only way to ensure UC apps are deployed on "aligned" disks for SAN deployments (i.e. pre-aligned filesystem disk partitions for the OVA's vDisks).

OVA configurations are summarized in the tables below for convenience, but authoritative information is on OVA file's release notes on Download Software on www.cisco.com.

What does "users" mean in tables below?"Users" refers to the indicated user count at a particular BHCA, number of devices per user, device mix per VM, etc. using the Cisco Unified Communications Sizing Tool and the design guides . Actual user capacity and total supported devices will be design-dependent; please follow all rules in the design guides and sizing tools for what your application can actually support.

UC apps do not support CPU oversubscription. One VM vCPU must map to one physical core (not one logical core) ( click here for details).

"One vCPU to one physical core" applies for all supported CPU architectures with equivalent performance for UC ( click here for details). E.g. one physical core on E5-2600 at 2.53+ GHz and one physical core on E7-2800 at 2.4+ GHz are equivalent for purposes of UC VM OVAs, sizing and co-residency planning.

Each VM OVA is only for use on certain CPU architectures. See the notes column for which CPUs are allowed.

E.g. the CUCM 1K user OVA is only for use on E5-2609/2.4 GHz (only found in UCS C220 M3S TRC#2) and E5506/2.13GHz (only found in UCS C220 M2 TRC#1).

All other OVAs (such as CUCM 2.5K user, 7.5K user, or 10K user) are only for use on CPUs with minimum core speed of 2.53 GHz click here for details, such as E5-2643/3.3 GHz or E5640 / 2.66 GHz.

For Specifications-based deployments (non TRC deployments), the CPU core count AND the CPU core speed correspond to physical CPU cores and physical CPU core speeds. Both are required to be met to support a full load VM OVA. At this time, only core speed for full load is defined. Do not use lower physical CPU core speeds until Cisco defines minimum speed for lower load levels. Cisco TAC will not troubleshoot a VM that is not receiving sufficient CPU cycles.

Unified Attendant Consoles

Supported OVA Templates: Unified Attendant Consoles

Application, OVA Capacity and Notes+Download Link

vCPU Cores

vRAM / Memory

vDisk

vNIC

Notes

OVA for CUxAC

1 @ 2.55 GHz

2 GB

1x 80GB

1

Note: Cisco does not provide preconfigured OVA files for CUxAC. Please build manually using these requirements. CUxAC requires a VM to meet or exceed minimum physical server specs described on the CUxAC datasheet

Notes: (1) IOPS are for each CM publisher synced in parallel. If only one CM publisher then IOPS are 100/500. The maximum figures would be expected during nightly Infrastructrure or Subscriber syncs. (2) PM requires SAS or SCSI drives for deployments over 1K phones up to 10k phones (Disks must be aligned) (3) PM requires FC SAS for deployments over 10K phones (Disks must be aligned)